Electron and hole spin dynamics and decoherence in quantum dots

In this article we review our work on the dynamics and decoherence of electron and hole spins in single and double quantum dots. The first part, on electron spins, focuses on decoherence induced via the hyperfine interaction while the second part covers decoherence and relaxation of heavy-hole spins due to spin-orbit interaction as well as the manipulation of heavy-hole spin using electric dipole spin resonance. The Loss-DiVincenzo proposal 1 to use the spin of a single electron confined in a quantum dot as a qubit for quantum computation has triggered significant interest in the dynamics and control of single spins in quantum dots. This has led to numerous exciting experimental achievements, among them the realization of single electrons in single dots 2,3 as well as double dots, 4–6 the implementation of single-spin read out, 7,8 the demonstration of the √ SWAP operation via pulsed exchange interaction 9 and the measurement of single-spin ESR. 10 For a detailed account of the progress in implementing the Loss-DiVincenzo proposal, see the extensive reviews in Refs. 11 and 12. On the theoretical side, one focus was, and still is, the investigation of the decoherence induced by the nuclei in the host material via the hyperfine interaction. The first part of this review article is devoted to the discussion of the rich spin dynamics that results from the hyperfine interaction. We first give an introduction to hyperfine interaction in quantum dots (Sec. 1.2). Subsequently, we discuss dynamics under the influence of hyperfine interaction for the case of a single spin in a single dot (Sec. 1.3) and for a double dot with one electron in each dot (Sec. 1.4). To conclude the part